Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Burda Website Rant

Ok, so by now most of you have already heard about the closing of Burda Fashion website for EG speakers and “merging” it with Burda Style.
I am going to start by saying that I am not one of those people opposed to change and new things, not in the least. However, I am miffed by this decision. I am also confused by what might have inspired it! After a long courting of American sewers, Burda just decides to take away its entire magazine website from them?
I used to use the magazine website a lot – for the archives, for previews, etc. Now I have to go to the Russian website (thank goodness my Russian is still decent) and navigate from there. But why? To me, Burda Style serves a completely different purpose than Buda Fashion and has a distinctly different concept altogether. I, personally, don’t care about it, but that is just me. There are plenty of people who like it and use it. What I am struggling with is why suddenly EG users are denied access to the most popular features of Burda Fashion. I read some of the explanations that the people behind Burda Style have provided, and found them plenty lame. They say that “some” features will be eventually added to the Burda Style, but fail to elaborate on which features and when. Now, if it was up to me, I would have first asked for opinions of users before doing something this major. Even then, though, I would have done a gradual move to Burda Style, and present users with a full of features website, as opposed to one that is yet to be populated.

Bottom-line for me, I've spent plenty of time on Burda Style to determine it is not my cup of tea, and I don’t see using it in future. As long as the access to the Russian Burda Fashion website remains an option, I’d continue going there for previews and archives.

What do you all think?